Talk of Fish
by AlienZombies
Summary: Is security worth the price of freedom? AU, 1x2, human!


Now... this is AU. The stitchpunks are human, and YOUNGER. Aha. PLEASE let me know what you think... I was very nervous about writing One and younger!Two. My take on his more adventurous attitude is based off of a comment by Shane Acker about him being a "salty old dog" and how injuries have slowed him down. He was probably quite the explorer back in the day. ;)

**Talk of Fish**

The light from the aquarium is sharply blue, tinged with green, and it lights up Two's eyes like I've never seen.

He stares at me from the black leather couch, leaning forward slightly. I feel weak to be pinned under such extreme scrutiny. He can measure and list each element of me, if he wanted, could pour me into beakers and cups and mix me up and produce chemical reactions that made smoke and pretty colors. He'd think nothing of pulling off my wings and pinning me to a corkboard, cataloguing me, putting me in a dusty drawer, marked by species, weight, diet. God, he's so brilliant. He's the only one who can make my feet go numb like this, make me fidget like this.

I play over and over with my class ring, and stare right back. After a minute, a slow, easy smile comes over his features – _oh God_ – and he tilts his head curiously.

"What are you doing standing all of the way over there?"

"Can't," I say. I'm embarrassed by the fractured quality of my voice. "I mean, why are _you_ all the way over _there_?"

"You're so stubborn," he chides, not without affection, and in three steps he's in front of me. It's the limp that gets me, that accident he had last year on his motorcycle. I always told him, he pushed himself too hard, always too adventurous, not cautious enough, he was going to get killed someday. He never listened to me. Apparently riding your bike on an icy road in the middle of the forest in the dead of night was a brilliant idea.

I remember what he looked like in his wheelchair. Defeated, angry, his eyes burning all of the time. I signed his cast four different times. We made love in that wheelchair, and it's a funny memory now, makes him laugh when I bring it up.

I lean back against the aquarium, smirking, pleased with myself. He looks at me lingeringly before he looks beyond me, watching the fish. He always had a thing for fish, and animals, and living things. They make him smile, and I love the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles. It's not the same look he gets when he works on mechanical things, like his bike – that look is darker, more passionate and focused.

He puts his hand against the glass (Father will kill me for the fingerprints later). "So beautiful," he says, in a quiet way. The light hits every sharp angle in his face, highlights his generous cheekbones, the straight bridge of his nose, the way his upper lip pouts over the first slightly, which gives him that Cheshire grin, when he really puts his mind to it. The faint indent of dimples, the scar along his temple from where he fell off of the roof in high school and hit a tree. I remember that, when that happened – he had been trying to fix the satellite, and had lost his balance, pitching straight forward into the oak tree, and oh, God, Father had been so furious for the damages… And of course, Two couldn't pay, had never been as wealthy as us.

I watch Two's hands, the way his fingers spread over the glass as if he can somehow morph through it via osmosis, swim with the fish, maybe. His fingernails are cut short, not ragged but dirty. Motor oil and dirt and probably blood and ink. I think it's funny how the two of us, so different, are so in tune. I wouldn't be caught dead with dirty fingernails, not ever.

"You ever wonder, do fish dream?" he asks in a far-away voice. It's such a weird question, I can't help but laugh.

"No. Do you?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I wonder about everything. I mean, what if fish are secretly super-intelligent, and here we go putting them in glass cases and feeding them flakes every day…"

"If they were so intelligent, they'd figure out a way to get out of the tank, I'd imagine."

He looks at me, and quirks his eyebrow in that adorable way he does. "What if they want to stay in there?"

"Why would they?" I scoff.

"What if… what if, they're so intelligent, but they like it in there, because it's safer, it's known? They like getting their food regularly, the clean water, the security of four glass walls, say, in theory. It's not good for them… but they stay."

"Makes no sense to me," I say stubbornly.

"Well, think about you. You're so smart, and capable, and talented, and oh-so-_very_-handsome..."

Okay, maybe he's flirting a little. He glances at me with those deep green eyes, lets his lashes sweep down over them, and he tilts his chin down just a little so the light will reflect just right and oh yes, he's flirting.

"Go on," I say, battling back a grin.

He smirks and looks away, back into the fish tank. "But you'd never disobey your dad and, say… run away with me. It's not safe enough. It's not known."

"It's stupid, that's what it is, I've told you a million times."

He spoke so softly I had to strain to listen. "Well, when you graduate from Princeton, and you get your degree, will you be any better off? Will you be any happier than you would be with me, out somewhere, living life?"

"You can't life live without money. Not even you. Society has _rules_."

He smiles, and it's that smile he gets when he's disappointed in me, and loving me for being the way I am that makes him disappointed. "I don't know what to do with you," he says, and pulls away from the tank at last, facing me head-on. "You're such a fish."

"I'm not a fish! You want to know what I think? I think you're one of those stupid fish who jumps out of the tank and suffocates to death."

He grins. "Maybe. But at least I found out what's on the other side."

Then I start to laugh, and he starts to laugh, and he puts a finger on my chest – just one, he's got such a power over me – and guides me to the couch, sits me down. And then he sits on me, and I hold him, smelling his hair. I like the way he smells, like outdoor air, the trees, the wind, the water. And underneath that, just a bit of spiciness, I can never tell quite what it is, and apples. He loves apples. He makes all sorts of jokes about Eden because of it, but I don't care much one way or another how much knowledge he's consumed, how damned he is.

One day, he'll probably even know too much.

We watch the news, because he likes to know what's going on in the world, but I can tell he's not really paying attention. After about ten minutes, I feel his cool lips on my ear, and then my jaw, and my throat. I ignore him. I want to find out what's going on in Pakistan – no, really. Honest.

"Stubborn," he mutters against my cheek. "Proud." He kisses the corner of my mouth.

"I'm watching the news," I complain, though my heart's not quite in it.

"How mad would your father be if we stained the couch?"

"I'd say we shouldn't try it. He's trying to find an excuse to have you murdered, anyway." It would be funny if it wasn't almost not a joke.

He pulls back and stares into my eyes, past that, down into me, and draws the information he wants. And then he's kissing me, sucking even more from the depths of me, rumpling my $500 sports coat, pulling on my tie. He rends a tiny sound from me, a pathetic whimper from the depths of my throat, but he was growling lowly long ago. "Come along, One. To the bathroom with you."

I resist, just a minute longer, wanting to absorb this moment with him, the light on his pale skin and eyes. I run my fingers through his dark, curly hair. "Nay, good sir, but here I must remain."

"This lady doth not understand the natural proceedings of events. This is customary."

"Customary, you say? Well, I cannot defile custom."

"Quite." Smiling, he quirks his eyebrow, and I'm won.

-- **fin**


End file.
